Mo' Guns!

Just another day at the office...I wanted to do an SG where I talked about my favorite guns, guns with their own stories, etc. So I just started hauling out guns, then spent hours talkng about them on camera. And then we decided we — real, I — needed to shoot each one, maybe 18-24 times, for B-roll. I thought, okay, let's use this as an opportunity to practice. So I stood there for about 3 1/2 hours shooting groups, one right after the other, at 10 yards.

Sadly, the last 5 guns were boomers, mostly .44 Magnums. I thought I had a bunch of .44 Special, but NOOOOOOOO, I picked up the wrong couple of boxes, and rather than go home and ferret out more Specials, I decided to shoot the Magnum stuff — Remington 240-gr JFP screamers. Cool with my ancient M29...then the 3 1/2 inch Alpha Precision 629 custom...then the 329PD. By then my right hand was approaching numb, but the Alpha Precision shot great groups. On round 3 in the 329, the lock failed...the stupid "LOCKED" flag popped up and caught the hammer on the way down. I unjammed it, on camera, with a multitool.

I ran another cylinder full of the Remington stuff without incidence. But at this point I have to say that you should NOT trust an ultralight S&W magnum revolver with a lock for serious purposes!

Shot a cowboy match today and everything went great for me...unfortunately my Sweetie's Marlin .32 H&R pretty much came apart. She switched to a back=up Navy Arms M92 .38/.357 and shot clean the rest of the match.

Thoughts on Civil Unrest...

...from Claire Wolfe in Backwoods Home Magazine:

Here are my definitions of levels of civil unrest and a little bit about how they might affect us:

LEVEL ONE: The lowest level of civil unrest is when people turn on their own neighborhoods—as happened during the race riots of the 1960s and the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Level One civil unrest can be deadly and destructive, but primarily to people who live, work, or must travel in the immediate area. Level One unrest is spontaneous, Dionysian, is confined to a narrow geographical zone where the protestors live. Police response may be harsh, but it's localized. Unless you're in the middle of it, you're unaffected.

LEVEL TWO: Level Two civil unrest may also be focused on a single area. But in this case, rioters or protesters have deliberately targeted a business district, a facility, a transportation system, or an organization to impose maximum disruption. One example: the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999; young people with violence in mind and rage in their hearts attacked an entire downtown, affecting hundreds of businesses and tens of thousands of workers who hardly knew what hit them. Another example: This spring, protesters in Thailand shut down the Bangkok airport, affecting who knows how many individuals and businesses. Level Two unrest is usually planned or semi-planned. The target is chosen deliberately. Although still focused in one area, Level Two can disrupt normal life and business in a whole region or country.

LEVEL THREE: Level Three comes when mass unrest or authoritarian crackdown causes disruption at state or regional level. Then, no matter what the original cause or location of the trouble, everyone in the region is affected. Effects might include travel restrictions, random ID checks, mass arrests, food and fuel rationing, controls on money and banking, roadblocks, and other harsh "emergency" restrictions.

LEVEL FOUR: Level Four is Level Three—but on a national or even international scale. It's martial law. If things ever get this bad, it's likely that the government itself will be a far bigger threat to everyone's well being than whatever the original cause of the clampdown was.

And of course, any level of civil unrest can lead to laws, regulations, and harsher police policies that end up affecting everybody in the long run.

By all means, read the whole thing. We're going to be talking about some of these civil unrest concepts on DOWN RANGE Radio next week...

Exhausted...

..from a day filming SHOOTING GALLERY! Short story is I wanted to show you guys some of my favorite guns...ended up shooting groups for four hours, with everything from a Walther TPH .22 up to an S&W 329PD 44 Magnum with full house loads...my hand hurts...

Also,WE GOT AN S&W LOCK FAILURE ON FILM! Flag popped up and caught the hammer as it fell. We'll get it transfered out of HD and into an MPEG to post on DRTV as soon as possible.

More tomorrow after a good night's sleep!

Interesting Tidbit on Colt

From the Army Times:

As of July 1, the Army has taken control of the design rights to the M4 carbine from its sole maker, Colt Defense LLC. Translation: With an uncertain budget looming, the service is free to give other gun companies a crack at a carbine contract.

The transition of ownership of the M4 technical data package marks the end of an era and Colt’s exclusive status as the only manufacturer of the M4 for the U.S. military for the past 15 years.

In late November, Army senior leadership announced the service’s intent to open a competition for a new carbine this fall in preparation for the June 30 expiration date of Colt’s hold on the M4 licensing agreement.

The Army is slated to finish fielding the last of its 473,000 M4 requirement some time next year.

Army weapons officials maintain that it’s good to have the option of inviting other gun companies to compete to make the M4 as it is now, if the need arises, said Col. Doug Tamilio, project manager for soldier weapons.

“We probably won’t do anything with it right now. ... We have what we need,” Tamilio said. “The good news is we will own it now; that gives us the flexibility to do what we need it to do.”

Small-arms companies waiting for the chance to compete for the Army’s next carbine view Colt’s loss of the M4 TDP as a new beginning for the industry and for soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Memorize This...

...from "David Kahane" on NRO. titled "I Sill Hate You, Sarah Palin:"

Yes, my friends, it’s once again time to quote Sean Connery’s famous speech from The Untouchables, written by David Mamet — the lecture the veteran Chicago cop gives a wet-behind-the-ears Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner, back when he was a movie star) while they sit in a church pew. “You want to get Capone? Here’s how you get him: he pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!” If you just think of us — liberal Democrats — as Capone you’ll begin to understand what we’re up to. And we just put one of yours in the morgue.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but maybe now you’re beginning to understand the high-stakes game we’re playing here. This ain’t John McCain’s logrolling senatorial club any more. This is a deadly serious attempt to realize the vision of the 1960s and to fundamentally transform the United States of America. This is the fusion of Communist dogma, high ideals, gangster tactics, and a stunning amount of self-loathing. For the first time in history, the patrician class is deliberately selling its own country down the river just to prove a point: that, yes, we can! This country stinks and we won’t be happy until we’ve forced you to admit it.

In other words, stop thinking of the Democratic Party as merely a political party, because it’s much more than that. We’re not just the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition. Not just the party of Aaron Burr, Boss Tweed, Richard J. Croker, Bull Connor, Chris Dodd, Richard Daley, Bill Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II. Not just the party of Kendall “Agent 202” Myers, the State Department official recruited as a Cuban spy along with his wife during the Carter administration. Rather, think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.

One I Missed...From Farmer Frank...

...on motels, no less...something I have a passing knowledge of. I use a modified version of Frank's system...primary gun in a shoe on my side of the bed, 2nd gun under the covers. A quick Walt Rauch story...I had a quickie trip to the D.C. area, one day so carry-on luggage. E.G., no gun, no knives. So my travel agent finds me a 3-star name brand hotel outside of Alexandria, the only room available on apparently the entire East Coast. It is late and I am dead tired when I make it to the motel, where the Indian gentlemen taking the credit card is behind an inch of plexiglass surrounded by transexual hookers shouting for their room-by-the-hour keys. Ah, crap, I think, but I am very tired. I get my key among shouts of, "We see you later, white meat!"

So I call Walt and say I am very tired, on my way to the only empty hotel room in the world, unarmed and surrounded by miscreants.

"Convenience store nearby?" he asked.

"Roger that," I say.

"Drive to the store and buy a giant size can of Easy-Off Oven Cleaner. Works better than pepper spray. Aim for the eyes."

So I did, and with a chair, the chest of drawers and my meager luggage stacked against the door, I slept like a baby. Here's Frank's blogpost:

MOTELS AND GUNS...

This is a subject that to the best of my knowledge few have written about, talked about or much less even taught in any kind of an armed self-defense course. What do you do with a firearm in a motel room? How safe are you in a 'rental sleeping room' and where is the best place to keep your blaster while you are totally in Condition White and 'proned-out' to boot?

Walt Rauch and I have discussed this at length over many years and I seriously don't want to steal his thunder on this issue because he came up with a method that I feel is pretty darn good and it should be his to explain. Not mine. However every method or means employing firearms always has good points and negative ones, so I will explain a method I came to on my own that works well in conjunction with Walt's. None of these ideas are the end-all, be-all on this subject. Just think of them as good starting points because so few have discussed this aspect of personal security in the popular gun press, or if they have....I was asleep in the back row and missed it.

All my adult life I have been a frequent traveler. And being the person I am, unless I was going off-shore, I was armed, sometimes heavily. Yet motels and hotels by definition are places where in all likelihood the bed you're getting ready to sleep in has been occupied by hundreds, if not thousands of souls prior to your dead-ass appearance. In the age of soft metal door keys, that fact alone always left me uneasy and lessen my belief in my personal security for the oncoming evening.

There's lots more, and all worth reading...

Nicely Written Piece...from a Liberal, No Less...

This from a small newspaper in Maine, written by freelance writer Liz Soares:

I've had the distinct feeling lately that we are poised precariously between two realities.

Our lives go on much as they have before. Our cars still run, our washing machines chug away, our children still manage to find summer jobs at McDonald's. Every so often the federal financial gurus tell us things are getting better. The Dow goes up for a day before it goes down again. Our jobs are safe. For now.

But then we hear the state government of California is writing IOUs. Tent cities are springing up in Florida. Major auto companies, once a mainstay of our economy, would go under if not for government help.

We seem to accept it all without a blink of an eye. So far we have left revolution to the Iranians. But we are talking about TEOTWAWKI among ourselves. Ordinarily peace-loving citizens are arming themselves. The murmur is growing louder.

I am listening.

Read the whole thing, and pass it on.

Jeez, This Stuff is Impossible to Parody!

I promise..this is the last MJ post...forever...at least, until he comes back...I mean, these are tough times for satirists like Yours Truly with headlines like these, from (of course) the Brits:

Michael Jackson to be buried without his brain

Michael Jackson will be buried this week– without his brain. As his family tries to finalise details for the King of Pop’s funeral on Tuesday they have been told it will be held back for tests.

They faced the grim choice of waiting up to three weeks for Jackson’s brain to be returned to them or go ahead and bury him without it – which they have decided to do.

Gosh...dare I say the word? eBay...eBay...eBay...

Anyway, was glad to see the Today Show finally cover Bubbles the Chimp. You could just tell that this wise, wise primate, with the richness of his experience, could reach such better conclusions than humans without that experience on almost any subject, especially those subjects related to bananas, moonwalking and female chimps. Actor, companion to the famous, witness to vile crimes, enslaved for his knowledge, engendering a nobility that transcends species. Powerful stuff:

These days, he spends his time hanging out with a group of six other chimps. Among his favorite things to do: eating sweet potatoes, listening to flute-and-guitar music, painting and kicking back with longtime buddy Sam, 40. "The two of them like to climb up to the top of a cupola and just sit there, staring out over the orange groves, watching the traffic in the distance," says Ragan. "He loves being up there."

Today of all days, lift a banana to Bubbles.

Presented Without Comment

The Gun Market & Economics 101

More and more I'm hearing that not only is the run on ARs over, the pipeline is starting to backup with unsold black rifles. This from our DRTV Forums. To be sure, AR variants are now available over the counter in many gun stores and some on-line outlets.

This would certainly be consistent with other "bubbles," and that may mean an opportunity. Remember we reported from the NRA Show that manufacturers thought we'd reached "peak AR" and that anywhere from 30-60% of their backorders would vanish as the market cooled. The time between the first slacking of demand and the normalization of the market, probably at least 3 months out, will see guns in the pipeline that were ordered by dealers/distributors but are destined to sit on shelves until the market levels out. 

A little less than 2 years ago you could find a serviceable AR for $600-800...expect to see those prices again, but not forever!  Act accordingly. Hey, Sarah Conner has an AR...so should you!

"Storm Clouds on the Fourth of July"

From Roger Simon at PajamasMedia:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen my country so divided and depressed on the Fourth of July in my lifetime and - no matter what Bob Dylan dreamed up - I’m not young, forever or otherwise. That includes the Vietnam War period when both sides at least had some conviction and excitement for the future, even if wrong. Not so now. The current situation is grim.

Obama is already over. In six short months the now-spattered bumper stickers with “Hope and Change” seem like pathetic remnants from the days of “23 Skidoo,” the echoes of “Yes, we can” more nauseating than ever in their cliché-ridden evasiveness. Although they may pretend otherwise, even Obama’s choir in the mainstream media seems to know he’s finished, their defenses of his wildly over-priced medical and cap-and-trade schemes perfunctory at best. Everyone knows we can’t afford them. His stimulus plan - if you could call it his, maybe it’s Geithner’s, maybe it’s someone else’s, maybe it’s not a plan at all - has produced absolutely nothing. In fact, I have met not one person of any ideology who evinces genuine confidence in it.

Read the whole thing...I agree with him...

Oh...sigh...

11 perfect stages, including one in the driving rain, and I throw away a perfect match in the "gimme" pistol segment of the 12 and final stage...a moment's loss of focus and away it goes!

Still, the best cowboy match I've had as a leftie!

-- Post From The Road

Happy Independence Day!

To those who serve, and those who have served, thank you

To those who paid the ultimate price, we remember.


-- Post From The Road

My Fun Match With My Sweetie

In Cheyenne, WY, sort of the Mother Church of All Things Cowboy, to shoot Hell on Wheels, the big cowboy regional match. No crew! No cameras! Just shooting for the heck of it.

After a day of shooting, I'm still "clean," no misses, and game plan remains intact...tomorrow is, however, ripe with opportunities!

Happy Independence Day Eve...remember our troops and remember that the people in Washington DC ARE NOT America!!!


-- Post From The Road